4.5 - Warlord Guide

DISCLAIMER:
I will never claim to have the best spec and rotation. This spec is the best one I've found so far, others may find a better one. I will update as time goes on.

With Piercing Thrust fixed and the buff to Everything is a Weapon. Warlord gained a significant dps increase and has acquired the competitive status. Still lacks on disconnects though so use Riftblade if there is a lot of that. This is my highest parsing spec atm.

This guide assumes you are already level 70 and have the final stage Eternal (Or at least the second last stage eternal).

- Your rotation will always be Builder > Finisher except for when you need to refresh Legendary Tactics
- Your main builders will be KotH and PT.
- Only use Decisive Strike after a KotH, it will crit and not consume the crit buff allowing your next PT to still crit. Other than that, PT > DS
- When you need to refresh Legendary Tactics, do it after a PT before the next AQD
- Replace any AQD with BB to refresh Shatter

- Go through a full rotation of KotH, DS and PT before popping Battlefield Experience
- Make sure to refresh Legendary Tactics and Shatter before the cooldown block so it doesn't fall off during it
- When KotH goes on cooldown, use Decisive Strike next.

-You can also consume the crit buff with PT when there's a few seconds left on KotH.

Notes:
- You will be consuming your second Everything is a Weapon proc with either Backhand or Arterial Strike.
- Arterial should have close to 100% uptime
- Both Arterial and Backhand trigger a cooldown for the other. This should be enough of a delay to not consume the second ability unbuffed. If you have both going off in one GCD, you may want to move them out of the macros and cast them separately.

I hate that this does more than the version i was messing with... However, comparing the two, our physical dmg numbers are not significantly different: leading me to believe that the new L.BB is buggered up. I think it's only counting the 10% given in the description, and not the 50% on a 3pt finisher.

Thanks for the tidbit about Decisive though.

Edit: In fact, after just checking... the debuff on the enemy is in fact only showing -10% armor, despite using a 3pt finisher...

I think it's only counting the 10% given in the description, and not the 50% on a 3pt finisher.

Honestly, I've never found abilities that bypass armour or resists to be all that useful. Might be decent in pvp but in raids it's never made much of a difference for me. So whether it's 10% or 50%, I don't think it would matter too much. Just my opinion though.

On another note, I did try your version. Dropping AQD is just a huge dps loss. Especially since you can't use it until 70%. BB could be better if it worked correctly. I really hate the Icy Bursts in my spec.

Originally Posted by May Contain Nuts

Thanks very much for the build.
I do have a question though... When would I use this over riftblade?

When you can melee forever and don't require a lot of cleave though the cleave is still decent in this spec. Ereandorn, Beruhast, Silgen, Beligosh, Tarjulia, Council, Isiel, Titan.

So whether it's 10% or 50%, I don't think it would matter too much. Just my opinion though.

Dropping AQD is just a huge dps loss. Especially since you can't use it until 70%.

Been staring at too many different numbers lately; I was being stupid. - BB itself gets the 50% armor pen, not everything for those 6sec. Why I see L.BB hitting for upwards of 1.3mil.

As I mentioned, all the extra fluff (fiery, icy's extra auto attack procs, dual wielding, 64 ES Mastery), is to help force-proc the 300% boosted one. 5:30parse, 78 PT's, 70 AQD's. The proc chance is 40%, but they're almost 1 for 1 considering on the dummy AQD cannot be used without the proc. - And that's why it just makes me sad that the 1pt IB spam wins out.

- Your rotation will always be Builder > Finisher except for when you need to refresh Legendary Tactics
- Your main builders will be KotH and PT.
- Only use Decisive Strike after a KotH, it will crit and not consume the crit buff allowing your next PT to still crit. Other than that, PT > DS
- When you need to refresh Legendary Tactics, do it after a PT before the next AQD
- Replace any AQD with BB to refresh Shatter

So if i am understanding you correctly, the best Single target with this spec is to spam PT - ICy Burst? (basically)

I understand we have to time the other stuff, KoTH, DS, etc... but when everything is on CD, we are basically hitting PT, IB, PT, IB, PT, IB ... is this correct?

So if i am understanding you correctly, the best Single target with this spec is to spam PT - ICy Burst? (basically)

I understand we have to time the other stuff, KoTH, DS, etc... but when everything is on CD, we are basically hitting PT, IB, PT, IB, PT, IB ... is this correct?

Dont do 3 point finishers?

It's not really worth waiting for 3 points before using ICY. Most of the time it will be 2 attack points and 3 when Arterial goes off. AQD is your actual finisher, it doesn't consume attack points or scale with AP, instead it gives you an attack point. ICY is just added in to consume those attack points for free damage.

So basicly I went Trough the rotations and just couldn't get the hang of it....However I did Test previous Soloing version I had and I did some updates on it. This is my prefered build...Not saying it's better...just saying it seems a lot easier to me .

For me personaly works very well...I'm not max on gear but i can get solid DPS.
If I compare it to the current top Warrior RB I must say it is close to it. The only downfall is that it's melee only.

So the Build is the same as your's(Considering souls and all)
The customization I made is on The Macro side:

#show into the breach
suppressmacrofailures
cast into the breach
cast Clear the breach

Now i know some things might be unlogical and I will still be working on perfecting it...Soo.

1st MACRO: the thing is I walways do Macros the way where we just rush trough cooldowns and than the spam ability. This is just the same it Goes with this one.
The thing you do here is just SPAM away.

2nd MACRO: So it says this is the second finisher and that's because it really is your SECOND one. So the way you play this is you SPAM the 1.MACRO and use this Finisher(Always press it 2 times for Piercing thrust to do 200% damage). After Using this Finisher It will go into Cooldown... That's where you will have you'r third button with Icy Burst in place.

So basicly rotation is: SPAM-2ND FIN-SPAM -ICY----Just make sure whenever you'r 2ND FIN is off cooldown(USE IT and also use that Piercing Thrust for 200% DMG)

IF your 2ND FIN is on cooldown use ICY instead.

Use Swift Strike every 30s for that DPS boost

Now for the 3rd MACRO i put in there called CHARGE is just a macro with 2 charge abilitys that will help you jump arround on targets and speed up your mobility ;)

I used Dual wield and Two hand....It all seems like Dual makes about 60k increase to me ;)

Can you show me a screenshot of your breakdown and gear? Looking at your macros and rotation, you are missing out on a lot of buffs Warlord has.

Killing Field is only good for cleave, don't use it for single target. There's a whole different rotation for cleaving. I tried to keep my guide simple as Riftblade is far superior in every way right now.

A Quick Death is a huge part of your dps. In your macro you have it at the bottom. You also have Battlefield Experience which means when BE goes off you will be spamming Decisive Strike and not getting any benefits from King of the Hill or Piercing Thrust.

King of the Hill buffs Piercing Thrust, Wave of Steel and Decisive Strike for 15s. It also forces a crit on the next cast of those abilities.

A Quick Death is a finisher, it simply gives you an attack point instead of consuming them. This is important for Everything is a Weapon. It also hits significantly harder than any other ability.

Everything is a Weapon causes your next two non-finisher attacks to hit twice as hard.

Piercing Thrust, Wave of Steel and Backhand cause you to do more damage to nearby targets. Piercing Thrust also hits harder than Decisive Strike.

KotH > AQD
DS > AQD
PT > AQD (Repeat this line until KotH at which point you just repeat the entire block.)

Replace any AQD with BB to refresh Shatter

After this you should realise that only one stack of Everything is a Weapon is being consumed. You can consume the second one with either Arterial Strike or Backhand. You will also realise that you have attack points that aren't being spent. This is the only reason Icy Burst is in the rotation, for free damage. Simply replace all four of the above abilities with the four macros from my post and you will have everything covered.

Once you are used to this simple motion, only then start worrying about the cooldown block.

Warlord is different from most typical warrior specs and can be a bit annoying to get used to. Your expecting the typical (Builder > Builder > Builder > Finisher) but here we have (Builder > Finisher)

You get to keep your two buttons but you still have to do 1 > 2 > 1 > 2 > 1 > 2 and so on.
Have PT on a third button for when you use Battlefield Experience you can simply go 1 > 2 > 3 > 2 > 1 > 2 > 3 > 2